A chat with Rachel Gardner-Poole, Jet Zero Council

Rachel Gardner-Poole rushes in like a plane landing on a runway.

She’s had to leave her women-in-aviation mentoring event to come to the Blue Boar Pub in the heart of Westminster. A keynote speaker at last year’s NZ Airports Association hui, Rachel is a chartered mathematician and a pilot who is heavily involved in aviation charity work and has been a member of the UK Jet Zero Council, chairing the Zero Emission Flight (ZEF) Delivery Group.

Aviation has been in Rachel’s blood since she was 6, when she heard about the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) charity, which flies in some of the world’s most isolated nations throughout Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Americas.

“At that point I knew I really wanted to fly. I thought it was impossible, my parents didn’t have any money and no one had ever been to university. It wasn’t really a thing. But that was my dream goal. I wanted to be a pilot, and one of my jobs when I was in my 20s offered to pay for my private pilot’s licence, so I took the job.”

She gained her PPL in 2000 and in 2008 went to flying college in Perth to complete her commercial pilot’s licence.

“Then I came back to the UK and was applying for MAF and building my flying hours. Eventually I got to the final stage, going through the interview process. I was 40 years old. I ended up meeting my now husband, and I kind of knew at that point he probably wouldn’t want to live somewhere like the Congo or South Sudan or Papua New Guinea.

“He went out with me anyway to Uganda to see if he’d like it, but didn’t feel the environment was for him, so that’s the point at which I stopped flying. However, I have used my flying experience in many of the jobs I’ve had since then and I’m now on the board of MAF, which is the best role I’ve ever had and feels like it’s closed the loop to my lifelong dream.”

Rachel worked in military aviation on mathematical modelling and then went on to the Civil Aviation Authority as a contractor, leading transformation programmes and becoming the head of general aviation. She was also a director at the UK Space Agency and the chief operating officer at an innovation and technology company.

After a sabbatical earlier this year, Rachel is now a consultant. In April 2022 she was appointed by the government to chair the ZEF group of the Jet Zero Council.

While the UK has been seen by those elsewhere, including Aotearoa, as a leader in sustainable aviation work, the council and its delivery groups have frustratingly been on hold since the Labour government was elected in July.

The Jet Zero Council was set up in 2020 as a collaboration between government and academia, and the aerospace and aviation sectors, to look at how the UK could reach net zero by 2050. The council has about 40 members, generally at the CEO level, and has been chaired by three Secretaries of State.

Underneath that, two delivery groups have been established – Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), which was set up in 2020, and Zero Emission Flight, in 2022.

“We have been looking at how do we get to zero-emission flight, in terms of the technology required from aircraft, such as hydrogen and electric options, and also looking at airport infrastructure to support that, and the regulation and policy needed to bring it all together,” Rachel says.

Members of those three subgroups had been meeting every quarter, Rachel says. One group had also been looking at what others were doing internationally, showing the UK’s progress to date has actually been somewhat mixed.

“We’ve already said that, by 2030, 10% of all fuel will need to be sustainable aviation fuel, but what we need is the mandate and pricing mechanism as well, to ensure that it doesn’t become too expensive, attracts investment to SAF projects and increases production in the UK.

“In the United States, they’ve already got that pricing mechanism in place and they focused on the fuel provider to make it cheaper. And in Europe they’ve taken a slightly different approach. But at this point there has not been any announcement here, so some may say ‘we are not advanced as we should be’.”

(Note: Since the interview, the UK Government has now announced that the SAF Revenue Certainty Mechanism will come into force in January 2025.)

“If it comes to things like zero emission flight, I think progress is a real mix. Bristol Airport’s efforts are awesome, as an example. But while we’ve got some airports that are advanced like Bristol, you’ve got some that are probably going, ‘oh hydrogen, that’s way in the future, let’s not even think about it’.’’

Rachel believes the industry needs to do a much better job at publicising its green efforts.

“There’s more and more people who don’t realise the advances that have already been made in aviation. But it’s not just about hydrogen-electric aircraft, or sustainable fuels, it’s also improved technology in more efficient engines, lighter materials, carbon capture.

“There are also concerns about non-CO2 effects, and a big one is contrails and the potential for warming to occur, and that by introducing something like hydrogen it could make it even worse.”

Brexit has provided another challenge but it is difficult to quantify, she says.

“There’s the whole skills agenda. Whereas before people could quite easily move around Europe and work and live there, now it’s obviously harder. And there’s a general longer-term issue around skills, you need enough people with hydrogen skills and expertise in all these new technologies.”

For now, it is not clear how long the Jet Zero Council and its delivery groups may be in statis.

It’s a reminder that, even with the best people, ideas and intentions to make significant change, a new government can make a huge difference and potentially stymie promising progress.

After a couple of quick selfies, Rachel is gone as fast as she arrived, disappearing in a puff of zero-emission smoke.

Aviation writer Paul Gorman met up with Rachel Gardner-Poole in London earlier this year (2024).